Reading Jay Baer’s recent post about truth and candour, I think he has got a great point.

The RSS-reading public loves a screw-up – an opportunity to poke fun at hubris and pride brought low.  Domino’s is the most recent example of a long list of internet marketing screw-ups.

He says

I never thought I’d see a day when corporations were the most trustworthy and forthright among us, but it draws nigh.

Wow.

The honest corporation is coming… can’t wait.  And yet, a small part of my brain seems to doubt this.  Many people would love to see honesty triumph over evil manipulators but human nature being what it is makes me think that ‘trying it on’ will continue.  It’ll just take a new form.

But taking the moral high ground and thinking positively – I’d like to set a challenge for you.

What is the worst rumour or gossip about your organisation?

I can’t answer this for you.  If you are party to the senior corporate people, policies, strategies and mess-ups that have happened in the past year in your company – you can answer this.

• What is the one thing that has the potential to most embarrass your organisation if it were leaked to the public?
• Which bit of bad news would cause you the most sleepless nights / stress headaches?
• How would you choose to publicly humiliate your employer?
• What could an employee reveal that would make your share price tumble or clients to resign?

The short, easy answer to all of the situations is to not let it happen in the first place.

Quick fixes

Go read about Crisis PR and get some free or professionally paid for advice on how to handle a situation if true but bad news does hit the headlines.

Check employment contracts for privacy and secrecy statement clauses and enforce them if needed.

But in the medium term, surely it’s better to run a clean ship?

What might you choose to do differently if any of the scenarios above came to public light?

Becoming a trustworthy corporation

Firstly, do you want to be a trustworthy corporation?  What are the benefits?

If yes, go and make a list of things to do differently.  Share it internally and make your own subsequent management decisions about what changes to make.

‘Nuff said.

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I will be speaking at Amplified 08 a "Network of Networks" event to bring together the creative thinking around several business networking events.

This is a ground-breaking event for business in the UK.  I have had the pleasure of being at a couple of 'seminal moments' when great things started (Social Media Cafe planning event in the Methodist Central Hall; Peppers and Rogers' methodology development; Pembridge investment strategy planning).  Frequently I haven't realised at the time how important they were to become.

This is one of those moments. 

Amplified08 will be one of the thought-leaders for this decade about new ways of doing business and harnessing the strength of our networks.

And I am very honoured to have been asked to chair a session and being described as a 'network guide'. Plus I've volunteered for a group about using social media for business development 'cos that's what I do.

Have a browse around the Wiki and read the newsletter and topic suggestions to find out more.

Conference Mantra:

What Works? What Doesn't? What Next?

• Create a network of networks which can amplify the power and reach of both our personal networks and the various UK social media, technology production and mobile media networking meetups that we regularly attend
• Come together to share our ideas and projects, to discover new ways of working together, and to break through the generation of silos among social media communities
• Coordinate the common themes from our various member networks to advance the causes that are important to the social media and technology scene in the UK
• Capture the collective intelligence from this first event to build our knowledge base and provide a more focused starting point for the next event in February
• Plan ahead for collaborative projects at the next event and beyond
• Work towards creating a major Network of Networks event targetted for 2010, working with NESTA that will run in conjunction with their own Innovation Edge conference.   We’re building towards 4,000 attendees that year, and a conference that will have the flavour of a "TED for Europe" [TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.]

Style:

Barcamp style organization
Unconference approachEverybody contributes
Everybody tweets
Live video streaming of each roomLive blogging, photo and video sharing
Encourage remote participation from anywhere in the World

 

 I love the ambition of creating a "TED" for Europe.  

And please, get involved yourself.

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Peter Eckert, projekt202

Chris Bernard, Microsoft

Kevin Flatt – Tribal DBB [agency of the year]
Brooke Nonberg – Pixel
Garrick Schmitt -Avenue A Razorfish
[I came because this session is supposed to be about the intersection of the traditional agency and the new online agency and how they and clients transition].

PE – if you are nimble it’ll be easy to move to this new paradigm.  The culture is changing and the internet is becoming mainstream and so this is the key for agencies with specialisations that fill a niche but others will find it hard to move out to this space.

CB – Any creative route or client if you don’t understand it you will risk falling behind and your voice stops being heard.  Step out and learn – recipe for continued evolutionary success.  

PE -it is going to be very hard to stay up with all the new social media outlets / trends…
BN – it comes down to ideas, she has seen powerful things from unexpected agencies.  There are wonderful things out there.  Either you have the client relationships and ideas or you let politics get in the way.   The team works hard together.
KF – Tribal was born out of DBB and the changing environment.  Because it is part of an organisation with a long history there was a lot of learning, transferred over.  Our medium is digital but we aren’t ignorant of the wider world of advertising.  Across all our offices we can see digital and all forms of communication.    The most interesting are the agencies that forget about the medium but focus on the communication and the engagement you seek.
GS – Creative ideas – you need a mastery of the data and the understanding of a user interacts with touchpoints and the influence of each.  How to change message and campaign structure to adapt to each one, and what people are saying online and on Facebook etc.  This medium is still evolving, data and how to make the judgements against it is native to the net and this platform and it will be harder for traditional agencies to apply their skills over to it.

BN – the net is just one channel not ALL the digital channels – there is so much.  The blood will be where people think it’s just about email or a website…. the consumer is moving through all these things all the time, they don’t stop.  There won’t be one single answer.  Authentic conversations within social media channels?  It is a dangerous space to push inappropriately into these channels – social media is something that you need to have a reason to be in… Insights come also from watching what they do as well as data and conversations with real people.   Take the tone and attitude and recognise it’s about sharing freedom of speech not pushing adverts.  

PE – business is busier than ever.  There is a second economy on top of the main economy…. I don’t know where it will go.  

There are a lot of women in social media – growing faster than males…is this a perfect storm for agencies?
BN – I have never managed a predominantly female team and women’s talent is needed.  Take into account sub-cultures within the gender of women…. many variants on ‘moms 38 – 45’.  
PE – this is not a female male problem on the agency side.  The internet isn’t about technology issue.

Platforms – a lot of work is building websites….there is a disconnect if we move to ad-supported models.  Marketers like to optimise channels will this affect our work as we build websites.  
BN – Previously we built things and then followed them around… now we build places that make sense to people.  Conversation is now to have sense of different places people attracted to a brand want to go and how you are meeting them through these things.  
KF – the biggest shift is designing for participation (broadly) and for distribution.   A whole set of experiences across a whole ecosystem.  You can get a stronger picture of consumer behaviour across all these media to see what works for them.  
PE – traditionally our customers have the traditional type of brand / corporate identity and guidelines and they don’t see software as an extension of their brand.  We spend time convincing them to develop a robust brand strategy that can work online.  Offshore developers don’t necessarily understand you have to have a guideline for them.  A lot of convincing to be done.  Social media is interesting they need more research before coming up with a solution – clients come with an idea and don’t relate it to their business strategy….

Questions
What tools are you using to sell the new outcomes to clients (platforms vs. radio/TV spots)?  It is sophisticated sell at this point…. just because it’s online it can be measured.  Traditionally-minded marketers love their campaigns’.  Start putting it out there as a micro-site.  That may be very tough bridge to cross.  Moving from that to the world with different content in different places – distributed – it’s possible to optimise and track.  Some clients are risk averse – worried about losing their jobs.  We prefer to work with those who work with the idea rather than get hung up on the data. The role of data is to support / deny a hypothesis not the end in itself.  Know your audience, client and speak to them in terms they understand. You are not selling ROI you are selling the idea.
Media is the new creative – slogan – how does this affect you?  It is scarier when different disciplines don’t get along and prevent a great idea getting out.  This is a new element that feeds in a unique contribution that elevates creative in a new way.  
Is there a risk that we have this great new platform and are we at risk of being not able to keep up with demand – what happens?  PE – keeping up is not as difficult as it might seem and so we pick what we follow and learn about.  We are banking on the ones that seem the most successful.  KF – you quickly understand your own limitations and success requires collaboration with others.  You are working across the board and we learnt that early on.  It will be interesting in the near future where we need to find the new experts and how fast we can move.  
At this point I stepped up and asked about biz dev tools  they are using for their own organisations.  All our websites are out of date but we’re too busy to do it…. [which although it may have been an honest answer was rather lame to my ears and so I asked a supplemental question]– wouldn’t this be a good way to show clients your best skills and overcome the risk-taking issues you discussed earlier….?  Yes but we find that they want to see a site working for a client who is ‘just like them’ which isn’t usually possible.

Is social media an important part of brands moving online? GS – we are seeking the super early days of how brands are using social media to reach consumers – seen as a place to run campaigns.  The interesting thing is the next level where how do you start to create a participatory culture where customers can provide feedback that drives the evolution of a product.  It’s more than just a channel to market.  Lego is a good case study.

PE – we see the social media component as the first notions of a broad place e.g. Facebook is getting yourself known.  There are new more focused ones coming up where you’ll meet people in real life as well.  

GS – Levis – client, contest with a show Project Runway – Levi’s manufactured the design made alongside the show.  The range of participants was fabulous and starting to get to the interesting meaningful interactions that people care about (aspiring fashion designers).  Hints where this could get to.  Fistpop challenge.

KF – every brand wants to create WOM and this is a technical platform that allows this to explode.  It’s an old thing.  Doing faster and more effectively and transparently.  

What is your take on viral ads just for the internet?  
KF – as an object it is easy to share and so does that make something viral?  As an idea, what is it that you make that people want to send?  Powerful
Getting requests from print / TV who want to move into WOM but then they want to drop the budget…..looking for savings everywhere.
GS – [patronising] – small business advertising is toolsets designed for self-service.  We work for big brands.  This is one where you will feel pain.  We don’t see it because the scale is bigger and they have to invest to generate awareness.  
CB – these technologies disintermediate things we used to do that take a lot of time.  We get more efficient and there may be blood….
What form of digital marketing is the most effective in acquiring new customers?
GS – mix display advertising and search which varies for different clients.  E-commerce versus awareness. The killer component is the combination deployed effectively understanding the target sought.  
KF – How to keep customers as well as getting them.  Less about communication and more about interaction. What is the lifecycle of this relationship?  If you are an interesting brand it is never ending…. continual ways to help each other out.  What have you done for me lately?  Not what have you said to me lately?  Levels of engagement vary from traditional adverts up to an integrated campaign.  The ultimate is to change the business – e.g. Nike plus.  It wasn’t a campaign (the advertising was only raising awareness) but it was a tech solution that changed how the world view on running.  Music, exercise and community…. compete against a friend, fundraising in groups, keeping track of it all via the device.   
If you cannot sustain the relationship with the customer around all their touchpoints and the experience they have the web is a dangerous place to be.  You can be removed by the technology – but you can easily transition into these areas that you can add value.  

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BIMA do the BEST dinner debates.  I’ve attended a couple in the past. 

I am going to this event, and it promises to be a fantastic debate to add to the discussions that I started here and here.

Jamie
Galloway, Director of Digital Media, Central Office of Information. The
subject of the conversation for the evening is: ‘The future for PR in a
digital world’

[Nice use of English.. the future FOR not, you notice, the future OF....!]  Pedants of the world unite.

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BL Ochman has a lot to say about oneline marketing, but picking up on my earlier threads on the Deathe of PR she ably demonstrates where sheer bloody-mindedness is hampering some in the trade from moving with the times.

My favorite comment of the night, from a woman who works for Biz Bash and who refused to give me her name (What are you going to do? Write about me?"):

"people who read blogs aren’t very educated."

The bottom line on the meeting - there is still
discussion going on at high levels about whether and how PR and
marketing can work together. And whether or not bloggers are
journalists, or idiots. And about whether corporations should blah blah
blog.

Dear New Media consultants: any time you start to think that new
media is making inroads into corporate settings, think about these
fossils …. er, folks.

Now maybe that’s a strong position to take.  And she is in US.  But it resonates closely with what Richard Stacey and I were discussing in the lobby after the London Social Media Cafe prototyping meeting…. Some PR company clients will continue to buy old world PR.  There is a role for it.  Many will move onto other forms of online and offline communication – some DIY and others using broad marketing communications specialists [who may be PR agencies or other more integrated agencies].  But we both agree that everyone needs to research and consider the new social media world before making a decision on whether or not to participate.

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I recently met the InHouse team and they told me that they’d secured an interview with my old boss, Don Peppers for their InHouse Village site.

Well, Don is a key man in my life for having jumped onto cluetrain very early and added the dimension that explained the future of direct marketing was integrated…. and that it needed to be supported by a new principle treat different customers differently.
His methodology for CRM was 4-steps: Identify your customers, Differentiate them by value and need; Interact with them and learn; and Customise your offering to their needs.

in his interview (published in short chapters…. two are up right now), he has developed his theme somewhat.

Key quotes

You can’t un-Google yourself
If your dialogues with customers don’t result in spontaneous replies from the customers – they are not authentic [he fails to add that this is PR not dialogue and that you might examine whether your offering is hitting the 'spot' with customer needs
The key brand trait today is TRUST.  A company should always act in the interest of its customers and not just in pursuit of profit. [nicely put - and a key part of WOM online]
When considering which brands your agency wants to work with, think carefully how many brands actually do hire an agency to work on their marketing.  Most don’t.  Target your approach.
When he was doing biz dev – Don kept a ring binder with one page of notes for each target brand he wanted to work with.  [A great low-tech means of keeping data to hand, up to date and focused.]

So far in the interview, it seems Don is just saying the same stuff about 1to1 marketing but realising that today’s digital world actually enables a lot of his past-10-years-theorising.  That’s fine.  What I want to know is what are leading companies actually DOING?  Now?

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Reading Adriana’s post on "Thin Air PR", thanks for the hint, Leo.  I was struck by the strength of feeling about the possible end of the business model whereby brands pay an agency to lobby the media on their behalf in order to generate column inches of written material.

What is public relations anyway?  The means by which brands try to get themselves talked about in the media.  And extended into events (experiential), lobbying MPs (public affairs), print media (media or press relations), public speaking (public relations).

Now let me digress into a real dead end…. what is the real definition of Public Relations?

Barrons says Form of communication that is primarily directed toward gaining public understanding and acceptance. It tends to deal with issues rather than specifically with products or services. Public relations uses publicity that does not necessitate payment in a wide variety of media and is often placed as news or items of public interest. Because public relations communications are placed in this manner, they offer a legitimacy that advertising does not have, since advertising is publicity that is paid for.
Management Help says
Public relations includes ongoing activities to ensure the overall company
has a strong public image. Public relations activities include
helping the public to understand the company and its products.
Often, public relations are conducted through the media, that
is, newspapers, television, magazines, etc.
The PRCA trade body says Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you.  Public
relations aims to earn understanding and support, and influence opinion
and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and
maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and
its publics.
[although I prefer the other PRCA - Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association]

So lots to validate the service and professionalise the relationship that a brand has with its audiences.

Cut through the polite-speak and it’s clear that when brands can have direct conversations with audiences in a meaningful environment, maybe the middle man gets cut.

As I said in reply to Adriana’s post, there are times when a middle-man is a valid, rational response to a business situation and using a PR agency is a great resource and worth paying for.  I wrote

BUT there is a time and a place for a rational use of an outsider to, in your phrase, send a proxy to the party. 

And that is when you don’t have the manpower yourself. There is a
nice way to use outsiders to help you plan your public profile and help
execute it through ‘events’ where audiences can experience the brand
first hand and announcements to the printed media e.g. stock exchange
statements, annual reports, product recalls.

Where the questions remain are in the areas of ‘lobbying’ where
brands use PR agencies to sell in a story and try and get journalists
to try their product and write about it.

The honest way to deal with this practice is for the printed article [for the journalist] to include a reference sources list that includes the name of the PR
agency. It creates an honesty measure and also provides a clear link
back to the source of the information.

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reading the Sunday Times’ 100 biggest private companies list this morning, it is not surprising that no agencies are on the roster.  The smallest has sales of over £400m and most are companies that make and sell things not services.

One of the underlying issues with our industry is that fundamentally we are selling hours.  Hours of creative expertise and experience.  But we are trading our hours for dollars.  There’s a limit to how much you can grow on that business model.  WE know larger agencies are not necessarily more profitable or more creative and so the creative services industry risks remaining full of SMEs – unless the business model changes.

A while ago, Tina Fegent, sent me a copy of Beau Fraser’s article on "Compensation".  He claims that Gate Worldwide is trying to work its timesheets better such that the areas where true value is added get paid at higher levels than lower value work like revisions.

He has five stages to a project: Discovery; Strategy; Development; Production and Revision.  Pretty standard stuff. But if timesheets were aligned to stage not just overall project, agencies would have a better idea of where they were adding value, making highest margins / profits and be able to adjust their pricing for clients and for staff accordingly.

When you find one team moves more smoothly with a client through to the production stage but then spends too long on Revisions – you know you start losing money.  And so agency staff compensation and client pricing could be adjusted to reflect this. 

it is possible.

Maybe this is one change to the agency business model that can move someone into the large public companies list….
Download AdAge_BeauFraser.pdf

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Brain dump following the event this morning.

BTW Thanks to everyone who came, particularly Adriana who doesn’t do early mornings (see photo!)

1. Digital Agencies are toolboxes not communicators
2. Internet = Customer Power
3. Americans are more willing to pay for ideas than Brits.
4. Two business modes for the new world 1 – Opensource.  2 – The Long Tail.  these are organisational structures not business models.
5. Employment and autonomy means no ‘boss’ but you need an infrastructure – a project manager / PA in one.
6. Communicators relay messages to audiences who supposedly have demand for the product.  But when the demand bypasses the communicators……:-)
7. The internet is permanent space, not fleeting.

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I was reading a magazine last week with a pull out advertorial from Accenture "Outlook: the journal of high-performance business".  I suppose they are trying to be like McKinsey Quarterly or BCG.

Anyway, it has some useful insights…

Changing ahead of the curve – many companies wait too long to attempt transformations, doing so only when the signs of trouble have become obvious. High performers change before they must, knowing that the best way to transform is from a position of strength.

They identify four critical goals to enable corporate change ahead of the curve

1.  Increase the company’s capacity for early change by deliberately fostering continuous renewal as part of its everyday operations.

2.  Generate confidence in early change by sharpening the company’s business acuity

Key here – ability to embrace data sources beyond traditional enterprise systems e.g. frontline staff as sources for ideas or listening to critics.  Pattern recognition – see through the data to the patterns and analyse them to create insights.  Catalysing change and acting on the insights – possibly using internal sponsors to accelerate change.

This is where the techniques I find most helpful work best.  I have always been an advocate of frontline staff – I was trained as a Geographer and an holistic approach including bottom-up research was key to the success of projects I worked on at that time.  Spending time in Scottish Power’s call centre gave huge insights to a customer touchmap [ask me about the 'gay' corner!].  Read Church of the Customer’s blog about listening to critics as a way of building sales.

3.  Overcome management resistance to early change by carefully and continuously evolving top mangement teams.

Using external resource to boost the team for key skills and at key times is often a useful way of injecting energy and perspective into a transformation project.  Even getting someone in just for the kick-off meeting as a facilitator can be a great start. Accenture reckon 10-30% of the skills usually need to be sourced from outside the company.  "High performers are open to leadership shake-ups, which contribute to education and growth."

4.  Accelerate the behaviour changes needed to start and sustain transformation by using leading-edge tools and techniques for sensing and responding to organisational change barriers and opportunities.

Todays newest methods and tools recognise organisations as complex, adaptive systems.  We are seeking leading companies applying new methods and tools to actively measure and manage aspects of corporate culture, an underexploited area of change intervention and management.

Here’s where the key theme of the web 2.0 tools comes in.  AFAIK they are the widest suite of new ‘toys’ available to managers and business owners that are new to the management theory marketplace today.  What’s the joy is that they really break down barriers and enable individual activity under the radar as well as through formal programmes allowing change to begin at a pace that the organisation is ready for.  Those people who ‘get it’ will charge ahead and get going on things they can quickly influence within their area of work – those that are slower to see opportunity will then get dragged along later.

I hope that this is the sort of insight Adriana will give us on 30th May.

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